Alphabet Soup- creatiing a typeface, final crit.

Issues raised
Letter spacing is often too small, meaning some letters may become illegible.
Look at creating a lowercase version of the font in the remaining time.

Action to be taken
Look into revising the letter spacing in some instances in order to make the letters more legible.
Also attempt a lower case alphabet to see how it will work visually and also whether it will still hold the same contextual meanings.

Creating a typeface final...

Here are some images of my final typeface.Some of the whole thing, showing the letters joining etc and some more detailed shots showing how the typeface is built up from diagonal lines. I am pleased with this outcome although I think comments from the crit were correct about the letter spacing often being too small, so confusing the letters

creating a typeface... Self evaluation.

Partner: Sam Edwards. 

Which personality traits did you choose to respond to and apply to your typeface? 
the five personality traits that I chose initially were... Southern, confident, social, smoker & laid back. I worked around trying to fit them all to my typeface through development stages however I found that by trying to fit so many into one face, the message often became very confused. So the three that I chose to focus on and implement within the development of my final face were confident, laid back and social.

What are the reasons behind the design decisions you have made for the typeface?
First of all I looked at creating a hybrid face from two classic fonts, one sans serif and one serif, helvetica and baskerville respectively. Using the bold variation of both to get across that Sam is confident by creating a bold face. I then looked at how I could portray social within a typeface, and I wondered whether this could be done using the layout rather than the actual face. So I joined all the letters and also instead of using outline. I applied a diagonal line pattern which I think looks more at how all the letterforms could be joined. Finally I looked at laid back, and chose to portray this very literally by creating an italic face the wrong way. So by italicising the letters the wrong way it was in theory laid back.

In what ways are the results effective?
I think that results are effective in that they portray the characteristics I was trying to quite simply. Whether it is a face that is totally relevant to my partner I don't know, but I am very pleased with the outcome and think that I made decisions to alter the face effectively.

Creating a typeface... alphabet soup (Progress Crit)

Issues Raised
Current experiments with type lacked links to my partners characteristics

Action to be taken
Look back at the definitions from original questionnaire and try to experiment in ways thats will better portray the characteristics of my partner within the typeface.

Rational - Alphabet soup... Creating a typeface.

What is the problem you intend to solve? 
Designing a typeface that communicates my given partners characteristics

Who is the audience?
Sam Edwards/ assigned partner

What do they need to know? 
They need to know and recognise when shown why the typeface is relevant to them.

Why do they need to know? 
Because it is a brief created around using a persons characteristics to aid the development of a typeface. In order to answer the brief.

How will they understand the outcome?
It will hopefully be a clear and precise typeface that illustrates them in a letterform...

What research is required? 
Primary- First hand information given to me by Sam via a questionnaire.
Secondary- Research into type, such as different possible base fonts and the various principles of type.

Alphabet soup...10 letterforms.

Here are my final 10 letterforms for the first part of alphabet soup. Here I had been given the word divide, and had produced letterforms which I thought showed this successfully.

Self evaluation - alphabet soup... 10 letterforms.

What is being communicated & how?
The starting point for my ten letterforms was the word divide, and I wanted to take the simplest route possible as I have often found myself pondering over concept a week into a brief (a week brief not being a good one to do this on) and the simplest ideas often being the best option. Having the idea of breaking the letterforms up in as literal a sense as possible from the onset gave me much more time to work on my visuals. The face I developed from Myriad Pro, using a grid to divide the characters in illustrator and then breaking them up sequentially. I then added an offset stroke inspired by the selection tool in illustrator and giving another dimension in which the letterform could be broken up.

How well does this answer the brief? & why?
I think because of the simplicity of the concept it answered the brief fairly comprehensively, with the visuals deriving directly from the definition of divide itself.

How well has the idea been visually explored?
I think it was fairly thoroughly explored with a good range of initial starting points and experimentation. However I think I could have done more varied and thorough research to inform my outcomes despite that which I collected being very helpful.

What are the strengths of the resolution?
The main strength of the resolution I think is the consistency of visuals and the strength of the translation from initial ideas and work within my sketchbook to finished outcomes. Overall I am pleased with how the letterforms work as a series which I think could prove quite useful moving on in the module.

How could it be improved?
One way it could have been improved overall would have been to rely less on the computer and taken a more hand rendered approach to the outcomes. This in conjunction with the computer software may have led to more interesting outcomes.

How to... final layouts.

Here are the final layouts we produced for How to... which would then be placed onto a USB stick at A5 size and can be viewed easily as jpeg images or as pdfs so viewing size doesn't really matter as zoom can be used on the computer. I was quite pleased with the final layouts and I think they work particularly nicely when printed as a series of A5 postcards which could then be given like fliers or placed in a freshers pack along with the USB drive.

Self evaluation - How to...

What role(s) did you take on in the group?
I took on a collaborative layout design position and also helped model the product during the presentation.

How well do you think you performed in the role?
Fairly well I think, I enjoyed the collaborative element of working within a group and being able to bring together peoples ideas&designs into the final layout.

How well do you think you worked as a group?
Our group got on well and worked well together. We all had ideas and work to add, giving a really individual feel from each member, whilst still having an overall group feel.

What were the positives of working in a group?
I enjoyed the idea generation stage, as this is often the stage I find most difficult however in a group I was surprised how well we combined to quickly and simply answer the brief.

What were the negatives of working in a group?
Because the majority of the group don't live together and we were all dealing with different elements of the product, it was difficult to get us all together in one place in order to collaborate effectively.

What will you do differently next time?
Try harder to work more often as a collective in order for the ideas to become clearer and develop sooner.

Where could you have improved your resolution?
With more collective work I think we could have had everybodys work placed more consistently throughout the finished layouts.

What were the strengths of your presentation?
I think the strong points of the presentation were the bold and simple messages at the beginning that all students would be able to associate with...
e.g. haribo on toast